Is There One True Religion, One True Path to God?

Devils' Advocate said:
Not exactly on topic, but I'm curious why all the cries of converting are suddenly flying around the site? What's with that. Seems a bizarre turn of events to me as I have seen nothing of the kind myself.
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me thinks it is just swinging back... me? I'm not trying to convert you to the truth, you are trying to convert me!
 
Devils' Advocate said:
Not exactly on topic, but I'm curious why all the cries of converting are suddenly flying around the site? What's with that. Seems a bizarre turn of events to me as I have seen nothing of the kind myself.
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Nor I. I think its a deflection.
 
Devils' Advocate said:
On topic of Luther nails it. I have no horse in this race whatsoever, so what interests me about the discussion is how we as individuals (and as groups) deal with information as it is handed down to us. For some, the reasoning is if it was reasonable to have happened why not believe it happened? For others it is more if there is no direct evidence it happened, it likely did not. To me both are flawed arguments. Why? Because the one simple reality is we cannot know. To make any other statement is reading into the story more, or less, than there is. (I have to include myself here, as I have fallen into this error more than once!).

And does it really matter whether Luther posted this on church doors or not? Seems Thomas has the right approach. What was the result of that document, both what might have been intended and what it turned in to. Surely the progress of history is what is important here. Dealing with minutia less and dealing with the big picture more seems the right way to go.
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Good post! I catch myself in this trap a lot more often than I want to admit, but I do try to overcome it when I can.
 
I absolutely agree that it is minutia.... and it is not the minutia that I am interested in... but the steadfast hold that mythology like this has on people. You know things that have no evidence, but a story, and that story is held so dear and argued so vehemently when a. there is no proof...and b. they claim it doesn't matter.

We cling to our stories.
 
wil said:
I absolutely agree that it is minutia.... and it is not the minutia that I am interested in... but the steadfast hold that mythology like this has on people. You know things that have no evidence, but a story, and that story is held so dear and argued so vehemently when a. there is no proof...and b. they claim it doesn't matter.

We cling to our stories.
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I don't disagree with you on this, Wil...but in the end it is the finger, not the moon, as long as the primary story comes across.

As an amateur historian I face this routinely...facts on the ground are scarce, and facts in the ground are subject to interpretation, so all of it requires a grain or two of salt. If chopping down a cherry tree helps a schoolkid remember GW, then it can't be all bad. I do agree that when it gets to the point of arguing over whether or not GW actually chopped down the cherry tree, and that argument comes to violence, that some important line has definitely been crossed that shouldn't have.

I know we (well, a *lot* of us here, myself included) want to believe that what we believe is 100% factual truth, but when we get down to it and microscopically analyze things we find that we probably only *actually* believe less than 10% factual truth, and use that as a basis to form judgments about the other 90 plus percent of our beliefs. What I say here includes scientists and atheists as well, so this phenomenon isn't limited to religious beliefs. It applies to *any and all* soft sciences as well.
 
juantoo3 said:
we find that we probably only *actually* believe less than 10% factual truth, and use that as a basis to form judgments about the other 90 plus percent of our beliefs
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Yep. So called factual truth is so often an interpretation. Or an illusion. Or a blind spot. It is why I try very hard not to staple a fact to a church door unless I am really quite sure it is a fact. Most of the time fact is more in the interpretation, which is why it is my policy to declare often that I just might be wrong.
 
Devils' Advocate said:
Yep. So called factual truth is so often an interpretation. Or an illusion. Or a blind spot. It is why I try very hard not to staple a fact to a church door unless I am really quite sure it is a fact. Most of the time fact is more in the interpretation, which is why it is my policy to declare often that I just might be wrong.
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While I don't disagree, it does create its own set of problems and issues.

What I was calling "factual truth" would probably be more accurately called "experiential truth," and would primarily be truth as reality, at least as experienced by the person. What I see you alluding to as "factual truth is so often an interpretation" would not be the same form or kind of truth I was referring to. The kind I meant is the kind of truth used typically (though not exclusively) to form the kind of truth you appear to mean, if I understand you correctly.

The problems and issues arise in that spontaneity (sp?) is lost, legalism sets in (PC, anyone?) and people in general presume words have common meanings understood without question...often with disastrous results.

Did you right the saw I saw on the right? You saw too, right?
 
My thinking was more along the lines of how often (which is very often) that what a person perceives as a real event is typically but a fraction of the entire real event. Our species has a really crappy system to observe the grand picture in front of us. It was biologically necessary I suppose. When primitive man ran the plains, those who favored the big picture of the world around them often missed the smaller picture of their immediate surroundings - resulting in being lunch for a carnivore. Humans who ignored the big picture and focused on specifics instead noticed that that grass over there was waving unnaturally and that could mean a predator. They had a better chance to escape to reproduce.

Honed over thousands of years and our perceptions of truth are truncated by our inability to see very much of the big picture truth. Rather we selectively focus on small pieces of the whole. This was the concept behind my comment to your comment that it may not be that we believe less than 10% of truth, but rather that we are wired to only perceive perhaps 10% of the truth before us.
 
OK.

I have sometimes equated the truth as an ancient old tree, with 6 billion and counting people standing around it.

No two views of that tree are the same. We each only get a piece of the reality.
 
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